Ignite Your Creativity with a Moodboard Maker

Creativity and inspiration can feel almost impossible to harness and communicate, but creating a mood board can help you organize your thoughts and bring your ideas to life. Finding visual inspiration and using it to compose a number of unique elements with the help of a drag-and-drop editor is an effective way to convey your message and ideas to the world. Read on to learn more about mood boards and how they can improve your creative process.

What is a Mood Board? 

A mood board is a visual tool that aids you in communicating a concept or visual idea — typically consisting of a collage of images, text and samples of objects in a composition. No matter how you utilize images, materials, pieces of text or other elements, a mood board is intended to convey an idea or evoke a feeling about a particular topic.

Today, mood boards are generally produced online. A digital mood board means you can leverage the vast inspiration provided by people all over the world to create something you love — and with enhanced drag-drop tools and mood board templates, you can do it fast. Advanced moodboard maker software and solutions, like NoteLedge, can make navigating the creative process simple on your idea board. With improved tools, you can tap into your imagination, unlock your creative side and complete an inspiration board in minutes.

Why Create a Mood Board?

A mood board is useful for almost any visual project and it works across industries too. It can feel daunting trying to express your vision clearly, but whether you’re a designer, interior designer or simply working on any creative design project, a mood board can help you get there. You can collect your thoughts, organize inspiration and refine a style before jumping into the deep end of any design project. 

Finding visual inspiration?

If you’ve been looking to create a mood board for your next idea or project, it’s time to start looking for inspiration. Visual inspiration can be a valuable asset in the design process, but it can feel overwhelming if you don’t know where to look. Luckily, there’s inspiration all around us — even if we don’t always realize it.

For a digital mood board, there are even multiple websites to start collecting ideas as inspiration for your next project. Some of our favorite websites to help develop your vision include:

• Pinterest: This is more than a simple social media service. It’s a great source to find photos of almost anything you can imagine. Search and browse through topics to find high-quality images ranging from home decor to fashion, to anything and everything in between. You can also find beautiful moodboard templates shared by other creatives. Create boards to organize your collection of images and collect content ideas to build your visual library.
• Dribbble: If you’re looking for examples of professional design work, Dribbble is a good source of creative concepts to rely on. This website is essentially a showcase of creative work from a community of professional designers and creative professionals.
• Behance: This is considered one of the leading online platforms for exhibiting and discovering creative work. You can explore an abundance of projects, images and mood boards from Adobe Illustrator while having the option to specify search elements, such as color or creative field. Follow your favorite designer and get inspired from their design concepts.
• Unsplash: Creatives also have an affinity for websites like Unsplash because of their access to high-quality stock images and photos makes it an amazing media library. You can browse through a collection of beautiful images from professional photographers all around the world. Unsplash is an ideal platform for amateur designers and professional designers alike to find image materials.
• Designspiration: This website is similar to Pinterest, but it offers a sharper focus on graphic design and typography. While you can save creative inspiration, colors, links, and more, this option might be the way to go if you’re looking for insight into suitable text or fonts for your project.
• SmallSeoTools: The reverse photo lookup utility on this platform enables you to search for any picture on search engines in a few clicks. You can search by image to find image sources or similar images by using it.

These resources are helpful to discover a host of inspiring elements and refresh your mind for the creative process ahead. But, keep in mind these websites are just a starting point. Inspiration can come from anywhere, as long you’re always on the lookout for it.

However, it’s easy to get overzealous in your search for visual ideas, so be sure to efficiently organize your findings along the way. Tools and templates are advantageous to compile your images, texts, and web clippings in one place so you can find what inspires you, organize your new discoveries, and go from there.

Considering Design, Color and Text — and Other Unique Elements

The creative process is exciting because there are so many ways to approach it. When creating your digital mood board you can consider design, color, text, external content references, or any other element that will make your collage or idea board expressly unique.

Generate Color Palettes to Communicate Your Message

Finding the right color scheme for your project might be more significant than you think. According to the Interaction Design Foundation, a color scheme is one of your most important elements, as it immediately helps, or hinders, communicating the message behind your design on both visual and psychological levels. Moreover, color is an eye-catching element that is typically hard to ignore, so it’s meaningful to ensure it aids your design in the long run.

You can employ help from websites like Pantone to make sure you get the ideal color scheme. Use trending color ideas to match collage of colors and create your own color swatches, or even consider implementing the Color of the Year or Spring Color Palette into your designs. If you have an image of inspiration, you can pull colors from the photo and extract the same color scheme with NoteLedge, or you can simply create custom color themes that work for you.

Utilize Text in an Effective Way

Text is another element that is typically more critical than you might expect. If your text is formatted in an unflattering way or impossible to read, the words become meaningless. It’s not only clashing colors that can be a harm to your mood board but clashing fonts as well. For the most effective delivery, it’s recommended to use fonts that are in the same family for better consistency.

Remember, presentation and arrangement matter, and visibility and readability are generally more important than pretty looks. Moreover, if you want this information to be remembered, pairing relevant images with text helped 65% of people retain information three days later, according to Brain Rules. Alternatively, you can also make use of Dynamic QR Codes that allow your audience to save the information you want them to remember on their mobile phones. All in all, the font you choose and how you implement your text most likely has a larger impact than you originally anticipated, so it’s best to ensure all of your design elements blend together well for the most successful results.

Other Elements to Keep in Mind

There’s no shortage of elements that you can add to your mood board to make it one-of-a-kind, but here are some of the most powerful features to consider as you create.

• Patterns: A pattern plays with colors, symbols, and layouts to give your design a specific look and feel. Compiling repeating illustrations or shapes can help you attain the level of energy you’re looking for. When utilizing patterns, consider what look would be most supportive of the idea you’re displaying or the message you’re communicating — ranging from soft and subtle to bold and active.
• Textures: On the other hand, the texture is a beneficial element to add visual interest and depth. It may seem more difficult, but it’s certainly possible to have texture in digital work. You can try different types of textures in the mood board, such as metal, fabrics, mosaic shapes, etc.This can help you create a bond between your visual features while evoking a specific feeling from the viewer.
• Icons: An icon can be outlined, filled with a solid color, or consist of a multicolored design. The specific style you decide to use for an icon can be advantageous to pull together your other elements — including your typography or color scheme.

As you choose your elements, ensure that all of the pieces fit together well — so your thoughts and ideas aren’t lost along the way. Finding a solution that can help you efficiently organize the moodboard layout and display all of these aspects may be the most powerful way to guarantee your mood board is successful.

Mood Board Examples

Moodboard can be extremely helpful when it comes to visualizing ideas and presenting them to others. Here are some of the types of mood boards that can be created:

• Photography mood board is a curated collection of images, colors, and textures compiled to convey a particular mood or style for a photography project, showcasing a specific style or theme, such as landscape or portrait photography.
• Brand mood board simplifies the organization of a company’s image ideas, including colors, fonts, and imagery, communicating the brand’s overall mood, style, identity, personality, and unique selling proposition.
• Fashion mood board assist with the exploration of trends and aesthetics in the fashion industry. It comprises a collection of design elements used by industry professionals to communicate their vision, make decisions, and create a cohesive look for projects such as fashion collections, photo shoots, and runway shows.
• Website mood boards help organize design ideas and create a cohesive look and feel for a website. This includes design elements like images, colors, and typography, ensuring consistency across all website elements and resulting in an impactful and visually compelling website design.
• Inspiration board aid to collect and organize creative ideas for a project, from interior design to travel planning, sparking creativity, establishing a direction, and serving as a reference point throughout the creative process.

Each type of mood board has a unique purpose and application, and utilizing a mood board maker can simplify the process of creating and organizing them, streamlining your creative workflow.

Finding the mood board maker and tools that work for you

All mood boards start as a blank canvas — it’s what you do with it that matters. There’s no right or wrong answer, but there are definitely ways to make the creative process less harrowing. You can explore templates online or employ tools to experiment with different arrangements of images. Suitable templates and tools will help you organize your ideas in a dynamic and effective way, while simultaneously making the process feel easy with versatile editing tools.

Advanced solutions like NoteLedge from Kdan Mobile exist to accelerate the creative process and optimize your mood board creation. With the aesthetic moodboard maker, you can capture inspiration from anywhere and create digital moodboards to visualize your thoughts. This flexible workspace allows you to arrange content, drag images from Pinterest and drop to your notes, make quick sketches, or compose collages however you see fit. Share your finished moodboard to communication design concepts with teams or clients.